NASA's chief believes the space agency is closer to landing astronauts on Mars than ever before, setting the potential arrival date within the next two decades.
According to Space.com, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden made such statements at a press event from NASA's Washington D.C. headquarters on Thursday.
"We are farther down the path to sending humans to Mars than at any point in NASA's history," he told attendees. "We have a lot of work to do to get humans to Mars, but we'll get there."
Bolden became a NASA astronaut in Aug. 1981 and, at the time, NASA believed they were only 30 years from sending astronauts to the Red Planet. Bolden, who envisioned himself traveling to Mars then, now believes NASA will be able to make good on the promise of putting astronauts on Mars by the 2030s.
In addition to further testing the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) that will be used for deep-space travel, NASA will soon examine the long-term effects of living in space, Space.com noted. Scott Kelly, a NASA astronaut, and Mikhail Kornienko, a Russian cosmonaut, are about halfway through a year-long tour aboard the International Space Station.
NASA is also going to send another rover to Mars, and this one will be outfitted with an instrument designed to convert carbon dioxide into pure oxygen and carbon monoxide.
"We're going to make oxygen on another planet - the first time ever to make oxygen on another planet," NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman said at the event. "These experiments - they're real, they're here."
Bolden's statements also coincide with the promotion of "The Martian," a fictional sci-fi film about an astronaut's trip to Mars, which opens in theaters on Oct. 2 and features a cast led by Matt Damon.
"[Putting] boots on Mars is possibly the most exciting thing humans will ever do," Bolden said. "We have been engaged in getting to Mars - getting humans to Mars - for at least 40 years, beginning with the first precursors.
"I have no doubt that we can accomplish what we have set our minds to do."
